Wheel House
Photo courtesy of South Bay Magazine
A soft melody of classical music is playing when Ron Arias enters his studio, lifting a curtain that divides the workspace from the rest of the dark garage. A single light shines above the small area and casts a warm glow on the clay-crusted potter’s wheel, desk and others tools that comprise his sanctuary.
Ron has been making the short walk from the home he shares with his wife, Joan, to this converted studio for years. It’s where he spends afternoons creating ceramics from the tan-colored mica clay he discovered on a trip to New Mexico. But it’s also a place where he’s learned to recast his detailed journalistic eye for the more relaxed gaze of an artist.
“It uses a different part of my brain,” Ron says. “I’m not thinking. I’m just doing.”
This calm enclave is in notable contrast to his previous office, where a flak jacket and helmet were stored away so he could leave at a moment’s notice. As a reporter for People magazine, Ron spent two decades traveling from one devastating tragedy to another, seeking out survivors who would articulate how it felt to be in events as graphic as an earthquake, a war or a famine.
